


I wish I didn't know

by canttakethecanon



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Just Baz in his head, M/M, Mentions a few characters but no one else is talking, One-Sided Attraction, a quick drabble, mild stalking, unbetad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 09:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18206822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canttakethecanon/pseuds/canttakethecanon
Summary: Baz decides, for once, to chase Simon. After all, turnabout is fair play.





	I wish I didn't know

**Author's Note:**

> In which Baz follows Simon to his summer home and promptly wishes he hadn't. 
> 
> This is just a drabble. I wanted to explore Baz's understanding of Simon a little and this adventure would also help me deal with the righteous indignation at Simon's treatment. This is canon compliant and does take place before the book during their sixth year summer break.

Baz only followed Simon once.  
  
He didn’t have to follow the disaster around; Somehow Snow was always nipping at his heels. With or without provocation. In fact, the only time he was free of the freckled fuck was summer break.

 _Free_ might have been a strong word. _Physically_ Snow was not there, yes, but Baz was never _free_. His mind carried Snow with him like a ball and chain. Like a teddy bear he was meant to have grown out of. Like allergies.

Ugh.  
  
It was those times he was physically away from Snow that Snow was the closest too him. In his sleep, in his daydreams, in the fucking shower. Siegfried and Roy, it was like he was being haunted. He couldn’t even play his violin without the flights of fancy jerking the rug out from under him. Much how he suspected Snow would want to.  
  
Jerk the rug out from under him. Not fancy Baz.  _Never_ fancy Baz.

Their sixth year summer was looking to be particularly difficult. Something about hormones and guilt fueling the pyre of his hatred must have briefly driven him mad because it was that year he followed Snow to his summer home.  
  
He didn’t know what to expect, really. The mage’s private beach house. A tower in a forest. Even Wellbelove’s house. Maybe she had a box for him in the corner of her room.

That one had made him laugh.

Maybe that was why he followed Snow, carefully and casually across three bus lines and two trains. He needed a laugh. Needed something for his trouble. The trouble Snow brought him day and night. Summer or winter. School or no school.

War or peace.

In a hoodie and jeans, with all the stealth his spells and patience could buy him, Baz followed Snow all the way to Birmingham. Of all places. Not as if Snow would notice him, thick bastard. It was like what little spark of consciousness Snow boasted at school went out as soon as they were past the gates. Nevermind he never caught anything important from Baz. Never picked up the little hints.

Thank Houdini for that.

Disembarking from the train he wracked his brain for who could be here. Certainly someone from school lived here, but he couldn’t remember who of Snow’s little entourage would count. Even as the city shifted from the clean brick and iron to rust and filth, he still couldn’t guess at where they were going.  
  
Ladywood had not been the place he’d expected Snow to stop.

Did he have a flat? Was the great Simon Snow slumming it out of school?  
  
It was obvious he didn’t own much. Baz had seen every single thing Snow owned every day situated comfortably in the four foot radius between them he’d been forced to share in their room. He hadn’t really considered Snow would be making his own way in the world with how many people seemed invested in his future. Obviously the Mage wanted his investment protected.

So why here?

The answer wasn’t one Baz had realized was on the table. They’d been walking a fair bit, Snow totally wrapped up in his phone, before the other boy had turned suddenly and trudged up the crumbling concrete stoop of a building, disappearing inside the metal doors.  
  
This did not look like a flat.

It didn’t even look _livable_.

Bars glared down at him from the windows. Several of which had broken glass. Music and children yelling could be heard inside. Not particularly _happy_ music or yelling. Trash was piled on the curb outside amongst dirty or downright broken toys behind a chain link fence. From across the street he could see a plaque beside the door but it looked like it had been rusted over.

Baz took out his phone and searched his current location.  
  
“ _Our Lady_ _Home for Children._ ” He read aloud. To no one.

His eyes went back up to the building in front of him. A tarp fluttered idly on the roof.  
  
This was where the hope of mage kind went?

This is where the _heir_ to the _Mage_ spent his summers?

In an orphanage.

An institution.

_A bin of left behinds._

Baz’s brain caught up slowly, though his feet were fast as he sped off the way he had come. He must have radiated something awful because no one, not even the odd bum dared speak to him as he passed. He practically threw the money at the bus driver and it wasn’t until he’d gotten several blocks away that he remembered to breathe.

As the streets crept by, Baz’s brain began rationalizing.

_He knew you were following him. He must have gone there to throw you off the scent._

Except Snow wasn’t clever. Thick was a compliment to how utterly daft he was. He couldn’t hardly speak he was so bloody _stupid._

His hands ached and Baz looked down to see them shaking in the grip they had on his jeans. He tucked them away in his pockets.  
  
Even oblivious to the effect he had on him, Snow still riled him up. Though it wasn’t really Snow pissing him off, was it? No.

No, Wellbelove pissed him off. Bunce. _The Mage._  
  
That _bastard._

It had been a great to do when Snow was named the Mage’s heir. It was the start of the real trouble in his own home after the awakening that sent half the population into a vomiting fit. That h-bomb under the Mage’s thumb;

Fiona had been livid. And _terrified._

They all had been. A great and terrible threat to all was a mage so unhinged, so bottomless, so _young_ …

Then to meet him face to face at school, ripped pants and rail thin. To be jammed in the same tower with him and see him unable to string together a sentence, hardly able to spell. Confused about the function of air freshener. Unaware of the politics he was now single-handedly paving the way for simply by _existing._  
  
It couldn’t have been more obvious he was a product of the government’s charity. Apparently he still was.

Something vile crept up Baz’s throat at the thought.

 _How had he not known?_ It all added up too well. Like a single piece of the puzzle had been missing, but it was the only one he'd needed to see the picture.  
  
It was the next stop before Baz remembered public transit was unnecessary and he climbed off to find a quiet place to spell himself home.

 

~(-)~

 

Laid out flat on his sofa, he tried to work out what to do with this information. There was an urgency in his chest the longer it sat in his head. Like someone should be told. Something should be done, but by who? _Him?_ The Mage? Did the magical world even have child protective services because he felt like mages sending their children to normal institutions to be rid of them over the summer was dodgy at _best_. Snow wasn’t legally a child anymore, nor was he technically the Mage's, but _morally_ …

Baz pinched the bridge of his nose.

A traitorous little thought _had_ occurred to him. To kidnap Snow right there. His family would have been elated, dragging home the Mage’s heir. Nevermind it wouldn’t have been for them, or the cause, or the magical world. Honestly it may not even be for his sense of moral outrage, however strongly that was raging inside him.  
  
Morgana’s ghost, that’s why he was always so _thin_. Snow’d come back bones and sagging skin. His table manners were offensive, but so was him not having food _at all_. It was why he never had anything. There was no room somewhere with all his things tucked away. No posters, or clothes, or stuff that everyone had. Yes, Baz lived a privileged life. One his family had worked generations for. But he didn’t feel like it was reaching to think a kid _might_ have a bed or more than two pairs of pants or more than a single bag to house it all.

That shitty bag had his _entire world_ in it.

There's that vile taste again.

When the fire burned low and the sun was long past sunk, Baz sat up from the couch. His thoughts had waxed and waned between furious and melancholy until finally he settled on just thinking about Snow. Sat on the side of a shitty bed, surrounded by a dozen other shitty beds, counting the days until he could go back to Watford. To his room.  
  
_Their_ room. With the beds they’d always had, the window they fought over, and the people who had any idea at all who he was… Crowley, that made his chest hurt. Whatever petty, bitter thoughts had cropped up about Snow getting to know suffering, getting to know real struggle were doused and used to fuel his anger. An anger that fizzled and died a thousand times, always coming back more bitter and bright.

It was always Simon bloody Snow behind this feeling. The stalemate he was forced to live in. Guilt ridden and self righteous. The feeling of total helplessness on the sidelines but no choice but to stay in the game... and for that he would always hate Snow.

Simon. Glued back together with gold, brimming with embers, hating Baz to the point of obsession _Simon_. 

Baz's mind was made up.

He’d take this information, along with everything else (like ‘ _Snow talks in his sleep_ ’ and ‘ _The Back of Snow’s neck gets red when he’s told he’s fit_ ’ and who could forget ‘ _Snow has actual constellations on his body_ ’) and lock it up with the rest of the harrowing truth’s Baz would have to deal with one day. Most likely the same day Snow incinerated him.

But for his trouble... he was going to _destroy_ the people around Snow.

 _They_ could do something. _Fix_ this. Bunce. Wellbelove. The Mage. All of them could help Snow and for some reason, whatever fucking reason, they _didn’t_. Snow was vulnerable and alone, living in squalor and they did _nothing_.   
  
And if he can’t forgive himself for leaving Simon to his fate, then he certainly wouldn’t forgive _them._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you're on tumblr and would like to see more of my nonesense, you can follow me @canttakethecanon!


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